10.1 Introduction to Managing Services

WebCenter exposes collaborative, social networking, and personal productivity features through services, which, in turn, expose subsets of their features and functionality through task flows. Task flows provide reusable functionality that may expose all or a subset of the features available from a particular service.

Always use Fusion Middleware Control or the WLST command-line tool to review and configure back-end services for WebCenter applications.

Some WebCenter services require a connection to an external data repository (such as a content server, a presence server, or a mail server) where relevant information is stored. For more information on setting up those connections, see the chapter for that service.

Table 10-1 WebCenter Services Data Repositories

WebCenter Service

Description

Metadata Repository

WebCenter or Activities Database Schema

External Repository

For More Information

Activity Graph

Leverages collective intelligence to benefit search and social applications

10.1.2 Setting Up Database Connections

Many WebCenter services store information in the WebCenter repository, which is a database with the WebCenter schema installed. For example, with the Links service, relationship mapping information, such as what object is linked to what other object, is stored in the database. The WebCenter schema is included with the product.

For WebCenter Portal applications, you must set up a database connection to the WebCenter repository. This database connection can be of type JDBC Data Source or JDBC URL.

Note:

For WebCenter Spaces, a WebCenter repository is configured out-of-the-box, and repository connection does not require reconfiguration.

Map the connection credentials, if the application uses an application-level data source with password indirection. The password is set through the Oracle WebLogic Administration Console on the Credential Mappings tab under Security. If you change the password for an indirect data source on the Connection Pool tab under Configuration, then it has no effect. For more information on credential mapping, see "JDBC Data Sources: Security: Credential Mapping" under the section "Creating a JDBC Data Source" in Oracle Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JDBC for Oracle WebLogic Server.

In a typical business scenario, applications are deployed to different managed servers, and multiple databases are used as repositories for the applications. The repository that you use in a development environment is different from that in a production environment, and therefore, when migrating WebCenter Portal applications from development to production, you must reconfigure the database connection.

When a repository connection is reconfigured, the local datasource file and the *-jdbc.xml file in the WEB-INF directory of the WAR file are updated with the new connection details. However, the JNDI Name and data source name remain the same. If you change the JNDI Name for any reason, then you must also update the adf-config.xml file. The JNDI name must be of the form jdbc/connection-nameDS. For example, if the application has a connection name connection1, then the JNDI name is jdbc/connection1DS.

10.1.3 Setting Up External Application Connections

When a WebCenter service interacts with an application that handles its own authentication, you can associate that application with an external application definition to allow for credential provisioning.

The following WebCenter services permit the use of an external application to connect with the service and define authentication for it: